


Path of the Huntress

by whatdoyouthinkmyjobis



Series: Hunters on the Hellmouth [58]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Demons, Dimension Travel, Episode: s07e15 Get It Done, F/M, Mental Institutions, Slayer Lore, Things are going to get weird, Trippy, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-01 16:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15146783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis/pseuds/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis
Summary: Forced from her home, Buffy decides to do a Slayer quest. Things get weird.





	Path of the Huntress

__

_Buffy and Dean smiled from-the-gut, can’t-hold-it-in smiles. She leaned into him, their arms around each other, anchoring each other. The sun shined on their faces and the San Francisco Bay glistened behind them._

Dean stared at the photo, willing the bright memories to color his dark world. He’d found it on top of Buffy’s pillow beside a note: _Do your best, Dean. I did mine._

She was gone.

“Done crying?” said a voice in the doorway.

Not in the mood to talk, Dean got up and tried to push past Spike.

“Where do you think your going?” Spike asked, firmly staying in the way.

“I’m going after Buffy,” Dean growled.

“Like ‘ell you are!”

His rage boiled over, and Dean pushed Spike into the hall. “Don’t tell me what the fuck to do!”

Spike shook his head. “You think I want a cock fight? Mate, I don’t give a toss about you. But I care about Buffy. Remember her? Small, blonde, in charge until you let teenage girls push you around.”

Dean drew a sharp breath to reply, but stopped. Spike was missing his usual smugness, his cat-like prowl. He was an ass, but he was a worried ass.

“Look, I wasn’t there,” Spike admitted. “But it seems to me you’re not the best person to track Buffy down right now.”

Dean needed to find her, to let her know he didn’t want this. Let her know how much he cared. But a nagging doubt told him that wouldn’t help her move on. She needed to get away from this chaos. From him.

He felt like he was back in that rundown shack by a backroad, standing between his brother and his father, taking the blows they meant for each other and letting his family slip through his fingers. There were no right choices.

Spike plucked the photo from Dean’s hand. “When was this?”

“Halloweenish,” Dean said. His own voice sounded small. Helpless.

“Some time between these smiles and Buffy getting the boot, you got on her bad side.” It stung to hear, yet Spike didn’t speak that truth with an ounce of malice. “I’ll find Buffy. Still got a little of that vamp tracking skill. I’ll make sure she’s okay, Dean. Besides, someone needs to run Camp Mutiny.”

Xander came up the stairs but froze when he saw Spike and Dean. “Testosterone meeting?”

“Not with you here.” Spike left.

The vacuum in Dean’s chest ached. He reminded himself that Spike had saved him when Buffy was under a spell. At great cost to himself, Spike had kept Sam alive when they were Lucifer’s prisoners. He would find Buffy. He _would_ bring her back.

Xander smiled nervously. “The girls are all packed in the living room waiting to hear from you. Ready to go down and give a rousing win one for the Gipper speech?”

“No.”

“Look, I don’t even know what a Gipper is, but throw them a lifeline at least. After today, well, we all feel like we’re going to lose.”

Dean didn’t have it in him to help Xander, Buffy’s supposed friend – who’d said nothing while a bunch of scared, clueless kids ousted her from the house – feel better about his chances. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Xander? Because today was a highlight. Buffy may not have planned the attack well, but she’s right. Going after Caleb is our only play right now.”

Xander shook his head in disgust. “You two really are made for each other aren’t you? Just because we’re sidekicks doesn’t mean we’re cannon fodder!”

Without thinking, Dean pulled back and popped Xander in the jaw. Xander tumbled back, leaving a dent in the wall.

Dean rubbed his fist. A curve played across his lips. Now he was ready to tell the Potentials exactly what he thought.

* * *

 

For the first time since he’d gotten his soul back, Spike thought about killing children. While he’d been inside patching some of them up, those ungrateful bitches were kicking Buffy out of her own home. They had no idea who The Slayer was. Who Buffy was. How she saved and sacrificed. How she sought out the good in even a piece of trash like himself.

So he’d followed her as he’d done many nights before; he hung back to give her room to think. She walked in loops around the neighborhood, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other. Around sunset, Buffy broke a window and stole into one of the many abandoned houses. From the outside, it was one of those pretty traditional style homes, picturesque with it’s white picket fence, bay windows and red door, but like everything else in town, it was hollow.

Halfway up the stairs, he heard her sobbing and followed the sound to a pink bedroom littered with stuffed animals. Buffy picked up a teddy bear, hurled it against the wall, and bellowed the sort of scream a person can only release when alone. She sounded like a wounded animal begging for a bullet between the eyes.

“Are we making the Care Bear pay?” he asked, pushing the door open all the way. “Personally, I’ve always had an axe to grind with that Ruxpin freak.”

She whirled around, hair sticking to her tear-stained cheeks. “Are you here to gloat? ‘Look at Buffy! Killing everything she touches! Can’t keep a houseplant alive, let alone some girls.’”

He shook his head. “No gloating. I know you probably want to be alone, but you shouldn’t be.”

She did not scream at him. She did not chase him away. Rather, she fell into his arms and wept. Spike cradled her head to his shoulder as her body shook.

Eventually her sobbing subsided, and she turned her face away. “I’ve been holding that in for weeks.” Her voice had the casualness of someone who realized they forgot to drop off their dry cleaning.

Before he could speak, she hurried from the room; he could hear her blowing her nose. When she emerged again, it was as if she’d wiped the breakdown away with her tears.

“I’m starving,” she declared as she headed back down the stairs.

Spike followed her to the dark kitchen squinting at the boxes in the pantry.

Eventually, Spike found a flashlight. “Have a seat, and I’ll get you something.”

“Spike, I–”

“‘ave had a piss poor day. Now grab a chair.”

She must have been too tired to argue. By the time he rounded up fruit cups, canned beans, beer and a half-eaten bag of chips, she looked ready to fall asleep at the table.

Buffy practically inhaled two cups of peaches and one applesauce before she muttered, “Sometimes I worry you were my most successful relationship.”

“We were a lot of things, love, but successful isn’t a word I’d ‘ave reached for.”

“We wanted to hurt each other, drown each other in our misery. And we did. Mission accomplished.”

Spike hadn’t wanted to hurt her, but each time he’d tried to reach out, bitter words spilled off his tongue before he could swallow them. He’d wanted to make her feel alive again. He’d wanted to love her. “I wanted to make you happy.”

“What part of Slayer/vampire romance says Hallmark, Spike?” She poked at the beans with a spoon and frowned. “The Slayer deals in death. That’s nowhere in the song.”

“Song?”

“First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes –” She made a face as she closed her mouth over the cold beans.

“You want all of that?” he asked, seriously. Spike had always thought of Buffy as above all of the normalcy she tried to put on.

“I do now,” she said, pushing her food away. “I’m going to go upstairs and sleep for the next six years, or whenever the Apocalypse finally wraps things up. Either way, don’t wake me.”

He followed her upstairs. She didn’t send him away.

In the master bedroom, she crawled into a large, fluffy bed. Spike pushed a chair close to the bed, propped his feet up, and settled in for a long night.

“Thank you for following me. I really need someone right now.” Buffy’s voice cracked and her eyes glimmered in the dim evening light. “I feel like a bull in life’s china shop.” She yawned. “Who are these people putting bulls in a china shops? Where do you even find a china shop?”

Spike half smiled. “Not the bull’s fault, is it, pet? Bull’s supposed to be strong. That’s it. A person can’t cage it up and ask it to pick out dinnerware patterns.”

Buffy pulled the blanket tighter around her. “What if the bull wants to pick out dinnerware patterns?”

She had always tried to wear too many hats. Spike recalled the day he met her, primly putting together some parenty school function, serving lemonade and tugging on her hem like a child. He’d thought she would be an easy kill. Some of her hats – friends and family – had saved her through the years.

This was different. This wasn’t Buffy striking a delicate balance between slaying and life. She was sleeping in a strange house after a shit meal because she’d been forced into a thousand roles – Watcher, mentor, mother. Roles that were never hers to shoulder.

He shrugged, “Maybe the bull could give the cow some of the load. Cow might ‘ave a better go of it.”

Spike didn’t know what exactly Dean had done to lose Buffy; he just knew they were broken. Yet Dean chugged on, running errands, training girls, helping with everything he could. Sometimes clumsily, but always with heart. It’s how Spike had tried to show his love as Buffy led him down the path from monster to man.

Despite himself, he said, “Dean’s a good man, Buffy.”

She nodded. “The best.”

Having drifted off in an armchair as he watched Buffy sleep, Spike awoke to her shaking his shoulders. Sleep as a vampire was a leisure activity, a novelty like fake glasses with a mustache or golf. As a human, Spike had discovered he was not a morning person. “Five more minutes, m’kay?”

“Hey, can you read Latin?” She was far more excited than anyone was allowed to be first thing in the morning.

“Course I can read Latin. And French and Italian. I ‘ad a proper Victorian education once upon a time.” It was too early for his eyes to focus properly, and he had a terrible crick in his neck.

She shoved a small book into his hands. “Here. I’m going to see if there’s any instant coffee downstairs.”

He unlatched one side of the book and found a plate inside showing a young woman shooting a bow and arrow. Beneath it read _Semita de Venatrix_ , Path of the Huntress. A few minutes later, Buffy returned with a cold cup of weak coffee. Spike sipped it and smiled through his gag reflex, glad she was at least excited about something. “This book is gibberish. Something about a war before time between powerful beings–”

“The Old Ones?”

Spike shook his head. They lived in the age of humans with vampires, a part demon part human hybrid, skirting on the edge. Back when history was still oral tradition, the Old Ones – large pure blood demons – ruled over the earth; but the war in the book did not sound like that legend at all. “No. Gibberish. Where’d you get this? What’s this about anyway?”

“It belonged to Nikki Wood. Robin gave it to me. I never even looked at it until I saw it sitting in my room when I was packing, and I wasn’t about to let those children touch it.” She pointed behind her where metal figures were arranged in a circle on the bedroom floor. She held up a scroll covered in pictographs. “I followed the instructions and put the dancing men together.”

“Writhing’s more like it.”

“Like building a nightstand from Ikea. Anyway, I got it together, but I don’t know how to make it work.”

Crouching by the figures, Spike pushed one, setting the whole circle spinning. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. ” For the first time in weeks, hope rang in her voice. “I thought we could try it out, whatever it is. Maybe it will give us some idea of how to deal with Lucifer?” Taking the book from his hands, she turned to the middle and showed him a woodcut similar to the metal figures.

He scanned the page. “ _Umbra fabri_. I’m a bit rusty, but I think it says these shadow figures, along with the right spell, should guide a Slayer when she feels lost.”

“Guide? How?”

“With light? It’s reassuringly vague. If we’re going to do this right, we better pick a better room. Your shadow makers need darkness.”

In the basement, they found a windowless laundry room for their spell. Buffy poured oil in the center of the ring of dancers. Hopefully canola would prove magical. She dropped a match into it. The blooming fire set the dancers spinning, casting their shadows large on the walls.

“It does look like they’re writhing. Now what?”

“Says it needs your blood.”

Buffy bent down and pulled her spare knife from her boot, but Spike stopped before she could cut herself.

“Just want to point out that no sunny country club spell ever needs blood.”

“But isn’t the spell for access to a Slayers’ Only Club? I mean, it’s like flashing my member’s badge with its unflattering, overexposed picture, right?” Making a small cut on her arm, she let the blood drip into the fire, turning it green.

“Green means go. What next?”

“You ‘ave to stand in it.”

“In the fire?” She glanced at him with a skeptical look.

“You got the member’s badge. Unless this is one of those visions from pain things. Do not recommend, by the way.”

Buffy took a deep breath and hopped into the circle. The green flames increased and swirled around her. “It kind of tickles.”

Spike read, “Venantes agmine viam eius et quae amisit. Tolle eam in medio. Ut inter ea. Semita revelare. Et venantes agmine iam perdidit ipsum, et sic omnes perdidit.” _The huntress has lost her way. Take her inside. Take her in between. Reveal the path. The huntress has lost her way, and so we all are lost._

The flames shot up in the air over Buffy’s head and both she and the fire disappeared.

* * *

 

She was in a familiar room, familiar like a recurring nightmare.

The poorly painted walls were off white. The lone window was high, the glass shot through with chicken wire. Scratchy white sheets dressed the sparse metal bunk bed. The small sink, cloudy mirror, and privacy-free toilet complete the prison feel.

Buffy tugged at the plastic bracelet on her wrist which read: _Summers, Buffy Anne 01/19/81 - 11/17/96  Dr. Francis Coombs_.

At fifteen, she’d spent weeks in this mental hospital pretending to not know about vampires. Pretending she wasn’t the Slayer. Pretending she was a disturbed arsonist.

Something hissed from the top bunk. In the mirror above the sink, she could make out an edgeless shape shifting and snaking, so dark it sucked light in. The rattling and hissing intensified. She could not make out any moving parts in this dense, fluid creature. It oozed over the edge of the bed. One spot on its black-hole body reflected light. A chill ran through Buffy as she realized the platter-sized spot focusing on her was an eye. She could see herself in the reflection. She could see herself dying.

It lunged. She ducked. Grabbing a sheet, she choked the creature (she hoped) with the makeshift noose. It bucked and banged her against the wall. Snapping a rail from the bed, she plunged it into the eye.

A high pitched squeal filled the room cracking the mirror, shaking dust from the walls. Buffy backed against the door, hands over her ears. It felt like the shriek was in her bones. Suddenly, the creature shrank to a dry husk and blew away.

The door of the room cracked open.

Adjusting her grip on the rail-turned-lance, Buffy stepped into the hallway. It was brightly lit and lined with never-ending doors. The hall did not end. It faded into the atmosphere.

The hair on her arms stood up and she felt a warmth surround her. Quickly, she twisted to see who was watching her, but the hall was empty.

The room across from her was empty even of furniture, but the room next door held a little boy playing with green army men.

Buffy opened the door. Before she could say hello, she fell into a cold emptiness. Desperately, she clung to the door handle, legs dangling in the void. She dropped the rail, freeing her other hand to grab the handle and swing herself back into up the hall. The rail never hit bottom.

Again in the hall, Buffy lay on the cool tile floor, her heart racing. As her breathing steadied, the sensation of being warm and watched slowly crept back over her.

_I did not expect you to seek out The Empty. You are here for the Angelverse, aren’t you Huntress?_ The voice was all at once soft, genderless, and deep, layered as if many siblings were speaking at once.

Angelverse? She had expected the shadow makers to lead her on some sort of vision quest like when she met the First Slayer. Was she on a backstage tour of the universes?

“My game show has an invisible host and crap prizes behind the doors. Sounds like my life,” Buffy grumbled under her breath. “Hey,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “What do you know about the Angelverse?”

_It is the dimension the angels oversee._

“What about this dimension?” She walked down the hall, her bare feet nearly silent. Each room was just a room from the outside, but weaponless and alone, she wasn’t eager to open another door. “Are angels in charge here?”

Suddenly she felt warmer, like she was walking through the bodiless creature’s blush. _No one is in charge of In-Between. Maybe myself, as I am the only creature native to this realm, but I serve only as a guide to travelers like yourself, Huntress._

Until Dean and Sam arrived, Buffy had only known of other Hell dimensions. She peeked in another door. A little girl with large sad eyes put her fingers to her lips and turned around, revealing a manically smiling face on the other side of her skull.

Goosebumps prickled across Buffy’s flesh, but she felt instantly warm when she turned back to the hall. Maybe this was how the creature guided?

“You live here? Never felt like doing any sightseeing? I mean, if you were going to hole up in a B&B in the Angelverse for the weekend, what would you want to see or, you know, avoid?”

_You are an odd traveler, Huntress. I have no desire to leave, especially not for somewhere so war-torn._

“No five-star rating from you then.” She had dreamed many times of visiting Dean’s dimension, but always with him at her side. A silly daydream of a getaway. But maybe this was the only way she could get information on how to defeat Lucifer.

One windowless door was rimmed in light, and once she passed it, she grew cold enough to shiver. Turning back to the warmth, she laid her hand on the knob. “Angelverse?”

_Yes._

“So, dumb question, but how do I get back home?”

_To return to where you were, you must return to where you were._

“Oh, how obvious.” She would not miss her guide.

The moment she opened the door, Buffy was soaked. She sat up, gasping and choking, in a coin-strewn fountain in a restaurant with “Yummy Kimchi Sushi” painted on the window.

An elderly woman with pale, waxy skin stark against a giant black beehive and uneven red lipstick counted money at a counter and regarded her as only the mildest of annoyances. The television behind her blared cheery pop music, and the walls were decorated with kitschy travel posters from every state, plastic flowers, and bright tassels.

The woman in the beehive shouted, and a slim young man hustled forward from the kitchen. Gently, he helped Buffy out of the fountain and ushered her to the back. “Long journey?”

“Uh, yes?”

Shoving a hot mug that said _Oklahoma is OK_ in her hands he said, “You are smaller than the last one.”

“Last…person to appear in your fountain?”

He nodded as if this was a normal feature in restaurants.

“If I ask you where I am and what year it is, are you going to freak?”

“It is 2010. You are outside of Peoria, Illinois, but you must leave as soon as you finish your tea. Go far. The last one caused…trouble.”

She had nowhere to go, but seeing as he had been kind and unafraid, she left him in peace.

Minutes later, she was standing in the parking lot between the sushi dive and the crappiest motel she’d ever seen. The yellow paint bubbled off the cement block walls, and the roof bowed. Two rooms had towels hanging in place of curtains. A boy who couldn’t have been older than ten fished cigarette butts from the planter in front of the office where people stared at her through the greasy windows. No one moved to help.

When she’d left Sunnydale, she was in khakis and navy sweater, but she arrived in the fountain in her hospital pants, a t-shirt, and no shoes.

A dark, middle aged man who looked like he hadn’t smiled in twenty years emerged from his room and approached her. He could have been a pervert excited by a wet-t-shirted damsel in distress. A pervert was subdueable.

A change of clothes and information were harder to come by.

“Miss, you okay?”

Quickly, Buffy yanked the hospital bracelet from her wrist and pocketed it. Then she unleashed a sob. “I – I’m lost!”

The crying appeared to unsettle him; he made a keep-it-down motion with his hands. “Alright, where you from?”

“Ca-Cali-ifornia.”

“Why you all wet?”

“I don’t know. I woke up in a pool.”

He looked her from head to toe, doubt shadowing his face. “Uh huh. I’m going to get a towel from my room. Wait here.”

Buffy did not wait, choosing instead to flatten herself against the motel wall. When he emerged a minute later, she noticed a white powdery line across the threshold of the door. Grabbing the man by the collar, she shoved him back into his room. “You’re a hunter!”

“And you’re not a demon. Strong though,” he said adjusting his neck. “Don’t suppose you’d want to cut to the chase an’ tell me what kinda monster you are? Save me the time?”

“I’m not a monster, more like a superhunter. Do you know Dean and Sam Winchester?” It was a long shot, but maybe her best one.

He sat down on the bed, hands resting on his knees, and smiled. The big grin sat unnatural on his face. Almost sinister. “The Winchester boys? Kind of notorious. So you an angel then?”

“What? No! Look, I need help. If you don’t know Dean and Sam, could you help me get a ride to South Dakota?”

“What you want there?”

“There’s a man there who knows them. I need to talk to him.”

“Why don’t you just snap your fingers and pop your feathery butt over there?”

“Because I’m not an angel!” Getting nowhere, she stormed out of the hunter’s room and stuck her thumb out by the roadside. The clouds were swollen with rain, and the tiny rocks on the shoulder of the road cut her feet. _Castiel_ , she thought, _Buffy here, visiting your Angelverse. Would be nice to meet you right about now instead of hitchhiking_.

Cars continued to zip by as light drops of rain speckled her face.

“She says she knows Sam and Dean.” The hunter was behind her talking on his cell phone. “Tiny thing. Blonde. Looks like she just escaped from a hospital in a rainstorm. I don’t know! Didn’t ask.” Holding the phone to his chest, he asked, “Sweetheart, what’s your name?”

“Buffy Summers.”

His eyebrows went up in surprise before saying to whomever he was calling, “Buffy. Summers. Yeah. _Buffy_. Worst angel name I ever heard.” He held the phone out to her. “It’s for you.”

Keeping a skeptical eye on the man, she took the phone. “How the hell do you know Dean and Sam?” demanded a rough, slightly twangy voice on the other end.

“Who are you?”

“This is Bobby Singer. Rufus there says you’re looking fer me.”

“Bobby!” Alone in a different world, yet Buffy was overwhelmed with the tingly giddiness of a child at Disneyland. “Oh my God, I’ve heard so much about you! It’s so weird to finally get to talk to you!”

“Well, start explainin’ yourself or I’m hangin’ up. Now how do you know the Winchesters?”

“This is going to sound crazy, but Castiel moved them to a different reality – my reality – about nine months ago.”

The old man grunted.

“Dean is sort of my boyfriend.”

“What?” He sounded more amused than annoyed. “Now I know you’re lying. Put Rufus back on.”

“Wait, no.” She racked her brain for any piece of information and let it tumble out in one breath. “John took advantage of your babysitting so much, you practically raised his sons from the time Dean was six. In fact, after Sam took off for Stanford, Dean lived at your place for months, but refused to take the bedroom upstairs he slept in as a kid. He thought that would have been turning his back on his dad, but he didn’t realize at the time how much that hurt you. When John showed up, you–”

“Enough! Where are my boys?”

“I told you. Different dimension.”

“They safe?”

“No, Lucifer followed them.”

Were it not for intermediate puffs of breath, Buffy would have thought Bobby had hung up. “I’ll be there in a few hours. Give the phone to Rufus.”

Bobby – Dean’s Bobby! –  was coming.

Buffy felt better after a shower and pizza. “Thanks again for the clothes,” she said. Rufus had picked her up some yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and tennis shoes while he was getting dinner.

“I gotta young white woman staying in my room. It’s in my best interest if you don’t look like you been through Hell. Although, it sounds like you been.” Over dinner, she’d given him a rundown of who she was, what her world was like, and what she and the Winchesters had been up to with Lucifer.

“It wasn’t always this bad…” She drifted off. Her memories of better times felt like a movie, experiences that weren’t hers to hold.

“Not here either.” He counted his bullets in neat piles. He’d taped newspaper articles to the mirror.  Lucifer was trying to end the world, yet Rufus was hunting something that killed a couple locals in a town that wasn’t his.

“Okay, I gotta know. Why are you here? Why is Bobby? You don’t have to be sorting your arsenal in a no star motel. What about family? A future? Or spending the Apocalypse beach-side?”

“Family’s dead. I been doing this a long ass time. Burned a lotta ghosts. Stabbed a bunch a monsters. Tried to retire. Locked myself up in my house. Stopped talking to anyone who had anything to do with hunting.” He shrugged his shoulders and slipped his handgun back into the holster.

“Few years back, the dodo you’re dating let a whole buncha demons outta hell. Not sayin’ I coulda stopped it, but the Winchesters always have the best seats to the shitshow. Close as Johnnie Walker and I are, I had to come off the bench when the damn angels appeared with the Apocalypse in tow. What started as revenge killing is now just something I gotta do. Ain’t no mystical forces keeping me here, but I choose me for this work so other people don’t have to.”

_I choose me._

Being The Slayer had cost her so much, yet Buffy had always been acutely aware of the fact that one Slayer located in Sunnydale, California meant the rest of the world was a virtual vampire buffet. Like Sisyphus approaching the top of the hill, she was always on the losing side even when she was gaining ground.

There were not enough people who could choose.

Buffy stood and stretched. “I’m going to go to the vending machine. Want anything? You’re buying.”

Rufus twisted his mouth and glowered at her through half-open eyes before slapping a ten on the table. “In that case, you can run your butt down to the gas station on the corner and get a six pack. None of that foreign shit, Supergirly!” he shouted as she left the room.

Supergirly. She’d told Dean to stop calling her that; she hadn’t wanted him to fall for the Slayer part of her, hadn’t wanted to be some trophy lay. But the Slayer always comes first, destroying everyone in her path.

She’d gotten as far as the Korean restaurant when a woman stepped in her path. She had long dark hair, deathly pale skin, and wolfish eyes. Buffy would have to run toward a small bank of trees behind the restaurant for a stake; then she remembered vampires in this universe had to be beheaded.

“The fireworks have been pretty tonight,” said the woman.

Buffy took a step back toward the motel. “Kind of cloudy for fireworks.”

“Light that powerful is normally an angel, but the color was off. Like a fallen angel but not. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t shown up yet to check in on you, Firework.” The woman’s dark eyes flicked black.

It had never occurred to Buffy to memorize the exorcism the Winchesters used. It wasn’t how she dealt with vesseless demons. Her heart pounded as she tried to remember the words.

Buffy stepped back again and felt strong hands clamp down on her arms. On either side of her were large demon-possessed men. “You didn’t think I came alone to investigate a supernatural touchdown, did you?” The woman laughed the sort of polite laugh one offers when told a joke they’ve heard before. “What tickles me is that not only are you something powerful, but there’s a whiff of my missing father on you. Tell me, Firework, where’s Lucifer?”

Buffy swung both of her legs out, her weight pulling the two demons holding her together. Their skulls cracked. One fell unconscious; the other grabbed her other arm as blood trickled from a cut above his eye. She spun and threw the man through the window of the restaurant.

The woman opened her mouth as if to scream; instead a black cloud billowed out of her.

The salted motel room was too far. Buffy leapt through the broken window, dashing between confused, shouting patrons. _To return to where you were, you must return to where you were._

The restaurant grew dark as the black cloud filled it. It wrapped around her, squeezing her ribs and freezing her body. As her vision went dark, Buffy jumped into the fountain.

**Author's Note:**

> The kimchi restaurant by the hunter motel is a real place in my town. So is the woman with the beehive.


End file.
